


Two Engineers are Better Than One

by commanderlurker (honeybee592)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 06:31:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13653402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybee592/pseuds/commanderlurker
Summary: A snapshot of two women, two engineers, two N7s, as wives, together and apart.





	Two Engineers are Better Than One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [worstcommander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/worstcommander/gifts).



Shepard’s seriously re-considering this whole military career thing as she does her fourth lap of the training grounds. In the rain. That she’s out running here is her own fault, she knows that. She’s just not used to be yelled at for no reason. Who does that, anyway, calling an 18 year old a shit stain just for fun? These sergeants are on a power trip. Assholes.

“Hey.”

 Shepard turns to see a bright smile on a dark face.

“Hey,” Shepard replies. It’s Riley. Lee. “You get the book thrown at you too?” It comes out between breaths. She’s not as fit as she should be.

“Nah, just saw you and took pity.”

Shepard huffs a laugh. “Thanks.”

The final fix laps go much easier. Shepard even smiles.

*

“Can you believe they gave us actual guns?” Shepard whispers. “On our first mission?”

“I don’t know what they were thinking. We’re fucking engineers. We don’t need guns,” Riley replies.

Corporal Darah clears his throat. “Pistols,” he says. “Not guns. Kessler II. Made by Hahne-Kedar. Only the best for the Alliance.”

Riley rolls her eyes while Shepard makes a show of correcting herself. “Kessler II. Right. Goes bang bang, though, yeah?”

Darah shakes his head; Shepard and Riley snicker and elbow each other.

*

True to form, neither women fires their pistols. Their drones do all the shooting before anyone else in the ground team has even unholstered their weapons. This remains the case through all their early deployments. They earn a reputation for it. Bets are held on whether one of them will have to resort to their pistol. Small fortunes are made and lost within the blink of an eye. Shepard and Riley just grin. They’re keeping tally, no doubt, but pride is worth more than credits.

*

Shepard turns up at the Villa with her kit bag slung over her shoulder and vague ideas about what to expect. Anderson’s vid message had been frustratingly cryptic and he had an infuriating smirk the whole time. She’s braced for the worse. This is N school after all. Only the best of the best get invited, and only the elite make it all the way through.

“Hey!”

Shepard turns around and a grin splits her face. “Riley, you bastard, they got you too?”

They clap their hands together. It’s electric.

“Ready to have flashbacks to basic?” Shepard asks.

Riley’s grin makes Shepard’s stomach twist in the most wonderful way. This is going to be good.

*

“Only nineteen hours to go,” Riley says. She hugs her knees as the rain pounds down. At least it’s warm. That’s one thing the Villa has going for it. She thinks Shepard hasn’t heard her. The rain _is_ very loud. But then Shepard’s hand is on her jaw, turning her and--

As first kisses go, it’s not romantic. Riley pulled a leech of her own cheek only a minute ago and Shepard’s skin is all red and swollen after tripping into a nest of fire ants.

“I like the way you think, soldier,” Riley says, and kisses her back.

Kisses aren’t as good as medigel, but they’re better than nothing. Makes the time go faster, too.

*

Most squads don’t require two engineers so Shepard and Riley are rarely stationed together. But when they are? Fireworks. Literal and physical.

They spend more time apart than together as they rise through the N ranks. It’s probably not a good foundation for a healthy relationship, but they’re young and reckless. They have better things to worry about saving for a deposit on a house in the suburbs. They’ve got to make sure they stay alive for that to become and issue.

*

Everyone knows they’re joined at the hip. They’re cute together. Handsome and proud in their graduation holo, N7 emblem positioned proudly next to their medals. They’ve earned it.

They’re going their separate ways again in a few days, off to take charge of their own commands, so they make the most of their time together, celebrating the only way two newly N7s know how: by blowing shit up.

They also break a bed.

*

Shepard is deployed to Elysium and becomes a hero.

Riley is deployed to Akuze and barely survives.

Both return to Arcturus Station but miss each other by a handful of hours. Pity. Riley could have done with a friendly face.

Shepard goes from success to success, gaining the respect of her superiors and subordinates. Her future is sealed, a destiny she just has to fulfil.

Riley thinks she’s stalled, stuck in lieutenant purgatory forever, unable to recover from the horrors of being the only survivor of a mission gone wrong, scared to losing her squad again. But she’s better than she thinks she is and soon gets promoted to commander. Even gets her own squad again. She can do this. She believes in herself. Helps that Shepard believes in her too.

When their schedules lineup, they rent an apartment and go to ground, talking, laughing, crying together. Leaving gets harder every time. Messages and vid calls only do so much good, nothing like the joy and releif that comes from skin-to-skin contact.

Just a few more years, they say, and they can hand in their discharge papers, become civilians, and get paid mega creds to apply their skills in the real world.

Then Shepard gets new orders, from Admiral Hackett himself.

*

Shepard and Riley squeeze each other’s hands as they wait for the registry office’s door to slide open.

“You ready?” Shepard asks.

“Always,” Riley replies.

They grin. The doors swish open.

There’s no queue. The receptionist smiles and hands them a data pad to fill out. “Have you brought a witness?” she asks, glancing at the space beside Shepard where a third person should be.

Shepard and Riley side-eye each other.

“No. Will that be a problem?” Shepard asks.

The receptionist smiles. “Not at all. You can either call someone if they can get here in time, otherwise I’ll be your witness.”

“You’re good,” Riley says.

The receptionist nods. Shepard finishes filling out her side of the form then passes the pad to Riley. Riley spends a minute tapping away, then spends another minute reading the fine print. She signs her name. “All good.”

“Very well, if you’d like to wait over here, Mashai Sato will call you shortly.”

The women go and sit. Shepard remembers to smooth her dress. She’d chosen it as a joke. It isn’t even white, but it does go right to the ground. Riley looks handsome in her suit. They’ve made the effort. They’re getting married, after all.

“You remember the rings?” Riley asks.

Shepard fishes around in her cleavage. “Right here.”

*

“--and now you may seal your love with a kiss.” Sato smiles, even seems genuine about it. He must get a lot of people through here. Fuck that for a job.

Shepard and Riley dutifully kiss, and their smiles _are_ genuine.

They jog back to the barracks hand in hand, Shepard in her dress and Riley in her suit. They can’t stop grinning. The door’s hardly closed before Riley tears the dress off Shepard.

*

A day after their wedding, they’re standing on the docks, taking in the view of the Normandy SR1

“Nice ship,” Riley says. “You’re gonna be a great XO, babe.”

“Yeah. Gonna miss you though,” Shepard replies. “As soon as this shakedown is done, we’re going on that honeymoon.”

“A week on Omega. Doesn’t get any better.” They both laugh at Riley’s sarcasm. Then their smiles turn somber.

They’ve been here before. They know the drill. Doesn’t make the impending separation any easier. Shepard pulls out a chain from under her BDUs. Two dog tags and a gold band hang there. Riley does the same. They kiss.

Riley swats Shepard’s ass. “Go kick some ass, Commander.”

Shepard returns the swat. “Back at you, Commander.”

*

The classy Omega honeymoon gets delayed a month. Then two months. Three. Six.

When it finally happens, a week isn’t long enough to catch up on what’s not classified, so they don’t even bother. Shepard’s read all of Riley’s reports from her own missions, and Riley knows better than to ask about Spectre business. Spectre. Her wife’s a Spectre. But for a week, they’re just lovers.

They buy the apartment on Omega, because that’s what married people do, right? Buy a place, settle down, get a dog. Yeah, right. At least it’s cheap.

*

Riley’s only just gotten back onboard her ship, pumped up on adrenaline from a successful mission, when her CO calls her into the briefing room. Doesn’t even give her a chance to change. She goes in her in armour, weapons still holstered, helmet under her arm.

Shepard. Her wife. Killed in action.

She swallows down the denial. Doesn’t even cry in the showers. Nothing she can do on the other side of the galaxy, anyway. Save her rage for when she can get up in Anderson’s face.

*

It wasn’t pirates or slavers. Not friendly fire or another government declaring war. Not geth. Not even the reapers. (She believes Shepard, even if everyone else thinks Shepard’s crazy.) The Alliance are keeping tight lips, even amongst their own. That means it's something bad. Real bad.

She railroads Alenko at the service. Takes him by the collar and shakes him, demands him to tell her what happened.

He tells her and she wishes she he hadn’t.

*

Life goes on. Riley goes on. Maybe she’s a little more reckless during some of her missions, at least for a while. She didn’t think the shrink would actually help, but she does. Slowly but surely, Riley puts herself back together.

Then she gets a message from Shepard. Her dead wife.

>>Hey Lee,

It’s me, or I think it’s me. Listen, I don’t even know how to process what’s happened. Just, trust me, please. I’m in Omega, in our place. I’ve left a stick here with details. Don’t leave a trail. Nothing. You’re the only one I can trust.

I love you.

Jane<<

Riley goes to Omega, tooled up, expecting a trap. The door hasn’t been tampered with. Biometrics say Shepard was the last one to enter, and the timestamp matches up with Shepard’s message. But she’s dead, right?

Still, she sends a drone in first. No bugs, no booby traps, no nothing. Everything is just how they left it on their honeymoon, except for the stick and an Elkoss Combine XI series omnitool in the wall safe. She sets up a separate partition in her omnitool and runs her own diagnostics. Nothing malicious. Satisfied that she’s not about to be blown up or otherwise compromised, she takes a look at the data.

First up is another message from Shepard.

>>This is my full biometric data. DNA, bloods, mods. Everything I could run myself. Please, run all this stuff, verify what you can. I need to know what they did, what’s in me, whether I’m still ME. When you’re done, leave all the reports on a datapad here and ping me on a throw-away terminal. Tell me what happened on our N4 mission so I know it’s you.

Another favour. I got my hands on a new omnitool. Elkoss Combine XI. Stripped to factory settings. Can you do your thing on it? I need backdoors, full two-F-A encryption. I need it to run underneath a Kassa Fab Polaris IX. Leave no trace, right? When I get that, I can breathe easier and we can talk.<<

Riley reads the message again, looking for whoever this “they” is. No answers to that question as she checks through the rest of the files. The data is comprehensive. For Riley to match this stuff up properly, she’s going to need access to Alliance records, access she currently doesn’t have. She weighs up the pros and cons of hacking her employer’s personnel files but can’t think of anything worse than not solving this riddle, so once she’s set up her omnitool to run tests on the genome Shepard supplied, she opens a backdoor to the Alliance servers. It’ll take a while; she’s not using a QEC, so she’s reliant on light speed and mass relays. That’ll pose a risk, give some security nerd a chance to figure out something’s wrong, but Riley knows what she needs and she knows where to find it. She locates Shepard’s file, the entire thing, and copies it. Minutes pass. An hour. She hears a thump outside and her heart rate spikes, expecting another N7 to smash the door in. But it’s nothing.

As soon as the transfer is complete, she cuts the connection and breathes a sigh of relief. The impact of what she has hits her. Shepard’s entire military record. Everything, from her enlistment form to her KIA confirmation. With the touch of a finger, Riley could see what Alenko left out, what the Alliance wasn’t telling her. But that’s not what Shepard asked Riley to do. She tamps down the guilt and curiosity and focuses on the mission brief: biometrics.

She compares the two sets of data, the files on Shepard’s stick, and the files in her folder. They match, one hundred percent. Even her white blood count is within a statistically average range. Her mods all match up, gene therapy’s the same. DNA sequence exactly the same. This is Shepard, she’s back.

She’s back.

Processing what this means is too hard, too much. So she sets to work on the ‘tool Shepard left, tinkering until she’s got it just right. She goes out and buys a fresh datapad, copies the info Shepard requested, puts it and the ‘tool in the wall safe. Last thing she does before shipping out is send Shepard that message from a public terminal. She smiles as she types. N4, man, now _that_ was a mission and a half.

*

>>Lee!

Thank fuck, I knew you’d come through. I feel like I can talk freely now.

So I’m still me, huh? Not a clone or some hybrid zombie thing? Can you tell? And no control chip? Miranda said she hadn’t put one in but I didn’t believe her. It’s going to take me a while to process the other mods they gave me. I feel like I’m on amphetamines all the time. I’m running double time but everyone else is in slow-mo. Is that normal? I don’t even know what normal is any more.

Anyway. Questions. I bet you have questions. You’re not the only one. Here’s what I know.

Cerberus have me. They brought me back to life. Project Lazarus they called it. Hubristic assholes. They gave me a new ship, a new Normandy, a full crew, free reign over how I run the operation. We’re going after the Collectors, after the ship that took down the Normandy.

I don’t trust these people. I’m playing along for the moment but I’m fully prepared to jump ship as soon as I can. Blow them all to hell if I can, too.

They’ve got some of my people. Chakwas and Joker. Their stories don’t sound fake. I’m pretty sure they’re here under their own volition. Wish I could say the same about me. I don’t trust them yet, as much as that hurts to say.

While you were doing your thing (thank you, thank you a thousand times) I went to the Citadel, talked to Anderson. He’s distancing himself. Him and the whole Alliance. They know I’m back, everyone knows I’m back, but none of them want anything to do with me. I pleaded with him, Lee. I got down on my fucking knees and begged for him to lock down the SR2 and take me back. But he said he couldn’t. It’s because of Cerberus. Fuck knows how many billions Cerberus threw at bringing me back. If the Alliance tried to lock down the Normandy, arrest me, or whatever, they’d be open to lawsuits so big that the Reapers would be here and gone by the time the judge finished reading the summary. They’re fucking terrorists, Lee, you know that. I don’t want to be here. I want to be with you.

What’s the Alliance doing about the Collectors? Anderson said they had operations in play, missions. Couldn’t give me details though. Tell me what you can. Cerberus won’t know.

They have a shrink on board. She’s always trying to talk to me, get intel out of me. She’s cute. Plays the role well but I’m not a fucking idiot. You’re the only one I trust, Lee. You’re the only one I can talk to. I know you’re running your own missions but message me when you can.

Jane<<

Cerberus. The word punches a hole through Riley’s guts. Takes her four weeks before her own missions send her pass the Citadel again. Can’t get an appointment with Anderson the old fashioned way, so she hacks his calendar and turns up at the appointed time and feigns anger when his PA expresses confusion about not recognising the appointment.

Anderson seems to know what’s up though. Sly bastard. She goes in straight, tells Anderson to tell her everything he knows. To her surprise, he does. Everything about Shepard’s current predicament, that is. And his story matches with Shepard’s. He even shows her the security footage: the Normandy SR2 in the dock, Shepard walking through the Citadel, Shepard getting clearance to enter Anderson’s office. She looks exactly the same. Exactly. Of course she would, her biometrics are identical. Riley has to close her eyes and hold her breath, lest she breakdown in tears. She won’t do that, not here.

“We can’t help her,” she says.

“Not officially,” Anderson replies.

“She… she did die though, right?”

Anderson nods, slow. “Her armour fed back to the Normandy even as it vented O2. We got the whole story, from start to end. Wasn’t pretty.”

“What happened to her body, then?”

“Scattered, just like the Normandy, all over Alchera.”

Riley doesn’t believe that. “One of them had to have found her. You can’t just grow fully sized humans in a vat.”

“You can’t bring people back from the dead, either.”

Yeah.

She holds herself together on her walk back to her ship. Chooses to walk instead of express transit. When she gets back to her ship, she closes her cabin door, locks it, and screams. She screams until her throat is raw and her lungs ache. She punches the bulkhead with her bare fists until they bleed.

Then she laughs. She laughs, delirious with joy, because Shepard is alive.

*

>>Hey Shepard,

Let's get a drink when all this is over.

Stay safe.

Lee.<<

*

They message each other most days. Sometimes Shepard doesn’t reply for a week. Mission blackout, she says. Riley learns who the Collectors are and she feeds this information back to Anderson. She turns into the middle-woman, Shepard syphoning off as much intel on Cerberus as she can, and Riley forwarding it all onto Anderson. He sends intel Riley’s way, too, and Riley sends it on.

It’s not all business though. They grumble about ship life, rations, running out of clean underwear. Riley tells Shepard about her own missions. Mopping up some slavers here, running interference there. Through Shepard’s Cerberus intel, the Alliance gets wind of a potential Collector attack. Riley’s closest to the colony, and she and her team evacuate the entire colony before the Collectors arrive.

Then one day, late in Riley’s night cycle, she gets a call. She’s still up writing reports but the chime still gives her a fright. She hits ‘accept’ and Shepard’s face appears in front of her, all blue and staticky.

“Lee,” Shepard says.

“Jane.”

“Good to see you.” She’s got a small smile.

“You too, babe.” Riley smiles back. A knot starts to form in her stomach, the instinct that this isn’t a social call. “I hope you’re calling me this late because you want sex.”

Shepard’s smile tilts into a grimace. The joke falls flat, even to Riley’s ears.

“I… I might really be going this time,” Shepard says.

Riley frowns. “Where?”

Shepard shrugs. “Wherever you go when you’re dead. For real dead.”

Right. The Omega 4 relay. Shepard had told her about that, her mission to take down the entire Collector homeworld.

“Okay,” Lee says. That’s all she can say.

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too.”

They sign off. Riley doesn’t cry. Shepard won’t let the Collectors kill her, not again.

*

Shepard survives. Her whole crew survives. First thing she does when they shoot back through the Omega 4 relay is send Riley a message asking when she’s free for that drink. Second is send Anderson a message. The Reapers will be here soon and they’re not prepared.

She tells the Illusive Man where he can stick it, and with Miranda’s full cooperation, she steals the Normandy and heads to Earth.

*

Six months of house arrest with one beefcake marine as her main company. Vega is sweet, but he’s no Riley. Shepard’s omnitool is taken off her so she has to use Anderson as her go-between. At one point Riley is on Earth, at Vancouver HQ, but Anderson can’t swing the permissions. Shepard takes out her frustration on Vega. He’s a good punching bag.

*

The Reapers carve a path to Earth. Shepard doesn’t have a chance to say “I told you so.” She fights her way to the Normandy, gets hauled aboard by a couple of friendly faces, and heads to Mars.

*

Hackett sends the N7s where they’re needed most. Assets that need to be defended, people who need to be evacuated. Riley flies from planet to planet, picking up, guarding, blowing up, doing whatever needs doing. She follows Shepard’s exploits, her heart bursting with pride--and frustration that she isn’t by her side. How many years has it been since they touched each other?

She’s sent to Cyone, an Asari-controlled planet with Alliance interests. She skips over the politics and reads the brief. Reactors have gone offline. Get them running.

No problem. Riley’s an engineer, after all.

Turns out getting the reactors online isn’t as easy as flicking the switch off and on. Reapers get through the planet’s defenses more than once and Riley’s team is left cleaning up the mess. She counts how many hours her and her team have been awake and reluctantly makes the call for backup.

*

Shepard steps off the shuttle on Cyone and has to force herself to be aware of her surroundings. This may be an Alliance facility but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Hackett wouldn’t have sent an N7 to sort it out if it was. Make that two N7s.

She checks in with Alenko and Vega but as soon as the facilities doors open, they’re gone, out of her mind. She only has eyes for the woman in front of her.

Riley’s kept the same style of armour all these years. Red always did look good on her. She takes her helmet off and grins. “Hey Shepard, looks like our cycles have finally synced.” Shepard rolls her eyes. “Would love to grab that drink, but we have a reactor to get online.”

Shepard loves her and hates her. No, she hates the galaxy, not Riley. She hates Saren, and Udina, and Hackett, and the Collectors, Cerberus, the Illusive Man. Anderson, the Council, EDI, the god damned fucking reapers. And she hates this fucking facility already.

She sets to work though, getting the reactors online while avoiding the toxic fuel plumes. Riley and her squad head into the neighbouring reactor base and out of Shepard’s HUD range. Comms still work. She and Riley keep their talk crisp, relevant to the job, but shit does it feel good to hear her voice, to know she’s right here, not just on the same planet, but within a click of each other. It’s been too damn long.

Of course getting the reactors online isn’t easy. This is an N7 job, remember? Shepard gets word from Cortez and Joker of an inbound Reaper ship. Would have been two but the Normandy’s thanix took care of one. The two teams make short work of the hostiles. Just husks, oh, and a brute. Fucking bastard brutes. But then that’s down and with a bit more tinkering from Alenko, the reactors are ready to go online.

“Ready, Riley?” Shepard asks.

“Affirmative, Shepard.”

And that’s when the mission goes tits up.

“Shepard, getting a little hot over here.” From the tone of her voice, Riley’s got her teeth gritted.

“Same here,” Shepard says. A brute smashes her last drone. She needs thirty seconds to generate another and she’s got a hoard of husks bearing down on her. Vega takes out a couple, and Alenko’s tearing even more apart, but--

“Commander, we’re being overrun,” Riley shouts. “Position indefensible. We’re not going to make it.”

“Hold tight,” Shepard says. Her heart is in her throat. She slashes at a husk, cuts it in half. “Vega, get your ass over there.”

“Yes Ma’am.” He’s blasting a path through the husks and then he’s out of sight.

“More incoming,” Alenko says.

“We got them.”

Alenko and Shepard make almost as good a team as Riley and Shepard, but two engineers are better than one. Two N7s are better than one.

Shit, Shepard’s had to take her pistol out, that’s how much of a cock this fight is. She unloads a full thermal clip into a brute, depleting its shields, then her drone finishes it off. Alenko rips the remaining husks apart with his mind and then there’s silence. Or, just the hum of the reactors. Either way, it’s peaceful.

“Riley,” Shepard calls into her comm. “Riley.” Nothing. “Vega.” Nothing. Fuck fuck _fuck_. “Alenko, come on.”

“We need to finalise the reactor start up--”

“Then do it.”

She starts running towards the second reactor base, sprinting and almost collides with Vega. She dodges, only to smash into Riley. The two go down in a clash of ablative armour. Shepard’s head jerks back and her HUD flashes orange for a second. Wouldn’t that just be great, getting concussion trying to hug her wife. They get to their knees and pull off their helmets.

Finally, finally, Shepard has Riley in her arms again, even if she can’t actually feel her. “I love you.” She doesn’t care who hears.

“I love you, too.”

They stare at each other, grinning like idiots.

“Want to come back to my place?” Shepard says.

Riley snorts. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

Riley stands and waves her hand at her crew. “Gleeson and Nyrek.” Shepard only just now realises that Nyrek is turian. That’s how focused she was on Riley. “Let’s get patched up in the Normandy. I’ll make the report from there.”

“But the reactor--” Nyrek starts.

“Will be fine for five minutes. Come on.”

*

Riley and her crew stay on the Normandy for five hours.

Five hours. Not nearly long enough to catch up on a lifetime spent apart.

Then Riley heads back to Cyone and Shepard gets back to defending the galaxy.

*

The Citadel is on its way to Earth thanks to the Illusive Man. Asshole. The galaxy’s fleets have mobilised, rushing to follow. _All units, report to Earth._ Riley knows what this means. It means she can get her ass off Cyone.

She leaves the reactors in the hands of the Alliance unit she’s spent the last couple of months training. None of them would get through N1, but depending on what happens on Earth, that might not matter.

Her little ship has to queue at the relays, just like everyone else, because everyone else is also military, high priority. She gets to Sol eventually, gets shunted through the Alliance supply lines, and finds herself in a safe orbit about Earth. The Citadel dominates her view every ninety minutes. It’s in a geosynchronous orbit, right above London, and Riley’s ship circles round and round. Even from up here she can see the devastation the reapers have wrought. Even gets to fire up her ships defences to thwart an incoming Destroyer.

The Normandy bursts through the Sol relay and hurtles towards Earth. Riley watches the feed and when it breaks atmo, Riley does too.

Her and her squad land in a field Hampstead Heath, five clicks from the FOB. She patches in, gets directions, and starts jogging. Her drones act as vanguard and rearguard and she never has to fire her pistol. Her squad mop up what her drones miss. They don’t miss much. She loses her them somewhere along the way, messages them to find a unit and make themselves useful. She’s on her own priority mission.

Then she’s at the FOB. And so is Shepard.

She shuffles into the meeting like she’s supposed to be there. Orders are simple: get to the conduit, that big ass blue beam shooting from the Citadel to London.

Riley hangs back after the meeting. Shepard’s busy talking to Anderson, but as soon as she steps away, Riley’s in there like a shot.

Shepard’s face lights up, all the tension and seriousness gone. Mostly. “Fancy seeing you here.” She pulls Riley into a hug. Their armour clinks and clashes and Shepard’s gloves are harsh against Riley’s scalp, but it’s the best hug she’s had in weeks.

Riley pulls back. “Ready to kick some ass, Commander?” Her voice has a wobble in it. She hadn’t anticipated that.

Shepard nods, solemn all of a sudden. “One last fight. One last push.”

They fight side by side for the first time in ten years. Cyone didn’t count. This counts. This means something. Two engineers are better than one. Double the drones, double the firepower. Alenko and Vega play back up as Shepard and Riley push forward, perfectly synced. Husks go down. Brutes. Harvesters. All around, Hammer squads fight and fall, fight and win, gaining and losing ground, but Shepard and Riley, they carve a path for the rest to follow, just like old times.

A reaper gets through Sword’s defences and fires a beam along London’s already broken buildings, sending Makos and Grizzlys scattering like kids’ toys. One rolls, bounces, right towards Shepard. She ducks. Riley ducks. Alenko and Vega duck, but not enough. The squad’s HUD’s light up red as Vega hits the deck. Shepard skids to a halt, hails the Normandy. Riley skids too, almost falls over, saves herself, and sprints back. Vega’s down but not out. The three of them take up defensive positions, drones patrolling the squad as they take what cover they can. The Normandy arrives seven long minutes later and Alenko hauls Vega in.

Shepard looks at Riley. Riley grins back.

They sprint. They don’t stop for anyone, for anything, and when they hit the conduit at the same time, they zoom up, up up up.

Time to finish this.

*

The crucible lights up red and fires its bright pulse through the mass relay network. Husks fall to the ground. Harvesters fall from the sky. The reapers still in space shut down, but Newton’s first law means they’ll keep coasting until something stops them.

The galaxy is… not quiet. Peace isn’t quiet. But it is safe.

*

“Good view,” Shepard says. She coughs and her broken ribs protest.

“Not bad,” Riley replies.

“Worth the effort, I suppose.”

Riley nods, slowly.

Shepard takes her hand and squeezes best she can. She stands, struggling with the effort, and does her best to help pull Riley up too. “What do you say we go retire now?”

Riley nods again. “Finish that honeymoon.”

Shepard smiles. “Maybe we finish recovering first, huh?”

Riley laughs. “And here I thought you’d be the impatient one.”

The couple shuffle through the hospital’s garden, back towards the doors, taking their sweet time, stopping every few meters to smell the flowers, breathe in the fresh air. Another week, the doctors say, and they’ll both be discharged. They’ll still have long months of recovery to fight through and they know it won’t be easy. These past few months have been the longest time they’ve ever spent together and they’ve already had one big fight. Turns out saving the galaxy was only their first battle. But that’s what being married is about right? Loving each other enough to solve their problems. They’re engineers, after all. And two engineers are better than one.


End file.
